the yellow rose
by Master of the AUs
Summary: Riliane Lucifen is the head of the notorious Lucifenian underground, the faction of the Yellow Rose. (They say that it is a circle full of children, with smiles stretched to the ears and a faint lullaby echoing through an empty room.)
1. the princess and the servant

Thieves were often considered the scum of society, the dirt on one's boots. Mere lowlives who stole from the hardworking, from those who truly deserved it.

In Allen's opinion, that was a load of bull.

A thief had to know when to steal - one would not survive on the streets if one did not have impeccable timing. Pickpocketing gave a thief a hazy, deluded sort of sixth sense, telling one when to run for their lives and when to shelve cash. A useful instinct to have, even if it left one too wired, too high-strung and empty-headed to appreciate it. It was second nature by then, ingrained into his bones by the coarseness of the streets themselves, and Allen found himself ever thankful for it.

Gender, age, sex, everything was irrelevant. Twenty dollars, a pearl necklace, a chocolate bar. Everyone had something he could get.

Allen smirked, gauging the dip of the man's gaze and the brief dissociation from well-pressed trousers to provide the perfect opportunity for a clean steal. This was a man with a pretentious moustache, impeccable taste in privileged clothing, probably brought their women home, and leered far too uncleanly at children for anyone to be much comfortable with him - a common target among pickpockets, a filth even those left to the back alleys couldn't bear to touch.

It had barely taken two seconds and now the man was in the middle of the Square with one less wallet. Allen withheld the urge to spit at his feet in disgust.

(Thieves often took to this approach to soften the blow of what they were really doing; stealing was not immoral if you stole from immoral men, and money was not money in the hands of monsters.)

Of course, profiling like this was rather unreliable to a trade newcomer. There would always be a man who appeared to follow the stereotype to the letter, and there would be those who would bend the standards, a kindly gentleman or a benevolent governess with food coupons and pictures of family far outweighing business cards and hundred notes. They were rare, but they existed, and even Allen had fallen predator to unwilling prey, once. A thief had to know who to steal from, and appearances could be deceiving.

There were better targets, of course. There were always better targets, better fortune, better luck, better circumstances. Not many could afford anything at all, really, and beggars truly could not be choosers if they took instead of received.

He recalled his dear sister's order - "return to the base before the sun touches harbor with as many fortunes as you can find," she had written, slipping the paper into the bottle and handing it to him with the solid expectations of a competent ruler. Riliane had warned him before he left that people would be out for her head and, by proxy, his, so he was extra careful during the entire ordeal instead of taking the risks he normally did. She had stared into his eyes, as identical as if she were to peer into a looking-glass, and released him to his duties for the day. A royal through and through, his sister.

Speaking of duties. Allen cleared his head and perched on the corner of a dilapidated balcony wedged between a clocktower and an abandoned house. He turned his nose up at that - what a disgraceful waste of space. With the ease of someone used to it, he counted the fortunes to his name. They ranged from the contact card of a Lucifenian noble to a smaller family's mysterious heirloom to an antique hairbrush. He saw orange tinting the horizon, and surmising that that much would be quite enough for the day, Allen knew he would have to return to his sister's side soon or face her wrath (he knew she wouldn't really, of course, but she would be quite cross and Allen was not inclined to beget her into such a state).

Allen leapt off his perch and broke into a slithering run, making his way through several old archways and worn-down paths paved by the thieves before him. He sped past the pier and the pavilion, the smells of flowers and carnivals leaving a brief impression on his nose, and the rich mansions and luxury apartment complexes lined up like dollhouses for sale came into view. He slipped through the lobby of their own needlessly extravagant apartment and waited patiently for the elevator to arrive.

"Brother dearest," his sister's voice rang, a private kind of smile on her dollish face. "Welcome home."

Four years prior, he would have never thought he would be his sister's glorified errand boy, but Fate had ways of surprising him.

"Riliane," he greeted dryly, shifting his duffel full of stolen goods to his other shoulder. "I trust you had a grand time plotting?"

She huffed, leading him inside. "Naturally! I wouldn't be doing such things if it didn't entertain."

The inside of their penthouse after the long ride up was rather bare; Riliane, of course, would not settle for anything less than perfection, but Allen had insisted on keeping things relatively clear so if they were to make room to accommodate for any separate persons later in the game they could easily move in a mahogany fixture or two. Of course, the house was as stylish as they came, all sleek and modern and glass, but his dear sister was fiendishly fond of the more classical things. Allen personally was fine with anything that could hold his weight; he had dealt with termite infestations and chipping polish, before, things he was sure Riliane was not accustomed to (and would never be as long as he lived and breathed!).

Allen set down the bag on the grand end of their dining table, which was as fancy as Riliane got away with. His sister sat herself on her 'throne', looking mightily self-important, and Allen went to get her late evening snack to make himself busy.

They talked about little things, at first. Where Chartette was ("She's doing the laundry out, since she broke the washing machine. Again."), the finances ("Can you believe the numbers of this? Where does it all go? What did mother do with all of it? This is absurd!"), and how much unused space there was in downtown Lucifenia ("They're just lying there, Riliane. Unused. Unloved. I have seen seven homeless children today, yet I have counted eighteen abandoned buildings!"). For them, it was all small talk, the longer discourse taking place in a room of pretentious old men in prestigious clothing who brought their women home and leered at children. Those meetings were always the worst. And about stuffy old people-

"How do things with the 'ministers' go?" asked Allen absentmindedly as he poured them both a spot of tea. Black for her, three or four spoonfuls of sugar for him. (He hated bitter foods. He never understood why people liked them.)

He just hoped Riliane's temper hadn't surfaced during the meeting earlier. That would have been catastrophic for everyone involved.

"Dreadful," she snapped, clutching her teacup with white fingers. "Wouldn't listen to a thing I say. Insubordinate, the lot of them. I say off with their heads."

Oh dear. "Sister, I know you've got the situation under control, but flying heads? Surely, a less fatal solution is in the cards."

Riliane slammed her hands on the table, an uncharacteristic fury burning in her eyes. They were white as the pearls he stole for her and her form trembled like a fallen leaf. It was an unnerving comparison.

"They called me weak," she hissed, and Allen nearly dropped his own cup. It was never this bad before, but it made a horrible amount of sense.

He knew since they met in the rain that day that Riliane was afraid of failure like he was afraid of being separated. She was reduced to nothing without acknowledgment, which was why Allen made it a point to ask her about everything she did. Those pretentious old men did not care about his sister, no. They had denied her her hubris, her dignity, her entire identity, and she agonized over it.

"They called me weak, Allen, dismissed me outright as unfit for the betterment of Lucifenia! A lineage does not make a ruler and I was weaker for it, they said! Child's play it was not, they said! They dare think me a child!" and she was laughing, now, a hysterical edge to the lack of mirth resonating in the walls with each peal.

He tried to calm down himself. "Then they're fools. They can't see what a great leader you'll be." He walked towards her, put his hands on her shoulders. "Riliane, look at me."

Riliane's trembling weakened, building up in her throat as warbling sobs instead of anything more explosive. Allen calmed. A crying Riliane, he could deal with. He had dealt with it most of his childhood, and he wouldn't stop now, even if Riliane's last breakdown was far behind them. He would never stop caring for his sister.

"Riliane? Riliane, I need you to look at me, right now."

She snapped her head up to meet his eyes, and Allen was affixed with the strangest sensation of being searched, mind and soul, for something he himself was not privy to. She laughed blankly, almost beside herself. "Ah, Allen. How can I be such a great leader if, even at this time, you must kneel and comfort me? Tell me, what sort of leader must that be?"

"Quiet," he said, and the burning rage he had seen in Riliane's eyes not two moments ago began to swirl terribly in his chest, white-hot like hands on a skillet. "Sister, dearest, you are not weak; trust me on this. I will fetch you pen, paper and bottle, and you will tell me what you wish of them, and I will ensure it happens."

Riliane looked so uncomfortably pathetic in that moment, as if she was beyond his reach (again), beyond his help (again) and because of his incompetence, she was suffering for it. His sister was the strongest person he knew and here she was, collapsed by a few degrading remarks about her validity as Lucifenia's ruler, by a simple denial. If royals were not decided by lineage or the decisions they made and instead by the death circling in their soul and the blood on their hands, then Allen would be Riliane's hands, Riliane's soul. What he could not bear to be were her tears.

Allen remembered the last time Riliane cried.

The rainwater soaked the cheap leather of his shoes and dampened the back of her dress as he held her against the storm. "Riliane, sis," he whispered, settling his arms around her shoulders as her sobs wrecked his coat, "sister, shh."

"I thought I wouldn't find you again," she cried, and looking into Riliane's eyes was like an exercise in existential dread. There was a shattering, there, reminiscent of broken window glass. It ached Allen's heart. "I thought I wouldn't, and no one would believe me, you would believe me, wouldn't you? Are you real? They'd - they'd said, they said you were gone forever like Mother is and that's obviously not true, you're always here, you're real, it just took me a longer time-"

...What?

The storm picked up and cold crept around his chest like a vice. His hands tightened. "Riliane, could you repeat that?"

"They wouldn't believe me when I said you weren't here," she said, hesitantly extricating herself from his shoulder, weariness suffusing into her words as she made an effort to pull herself upright. "You aren't gone, ha, serves them. I'm right!"

"No, sister, I meant-" Allen stumbled, Lucifenian seemingly out of his reach. "Repeat it to me, Riliane. Tell me of your story from the beginning, no exceptions. I must know everything - this 'they', they've obviously upset you and I want to know who is to blame, and what-" he tightened his hands around her shoulders, "-what do you mean when you say mother is gone?"

He deserved to know. He had run away in the middle of the night, during a storm, and he was cold, and nothing made sense. And his better half was right there in front of him, like an illusion, and she was crying. That wasn't supposed to happen, ever, period, it was his job to make her happy. And she was throwing one revelation after another, making him question the situation he was in, making the pillars of his world explode. Boom, boom, boom.

"Mother is dead," she said, and a little bit of the world went with it. A clap of thunder. Boom, boom, boom. "It was the Gula - her physicians informed me she only caught that plague, but…"

Allen nodded. "It could be anything. Do you think poisoning?"

Riliane looked up, frigid. "Mother wouldn't go so shamefully." It was neither an affirmation or a denial, but it rang loud in his ears all the same.

"Now, 'they'?"

His sister abruptly stood up, and Allen was left kneeling in an awkward fashion on the pavement, soaked to his bones. "Come, Allen," she said, straightening her skirts. She still tried to be regal, even after this whole while, even after a breakdown, even after re-uniting for the first time in years - she was still so much stronger than he was. "It is filthy and unbecoming for us to chatter away in the rain like this. I am cold and miserable. Follow me to our place."

Our place. Allen was reminded of his foster father and the way his prone form laid limp and drunk to the Heavenly Yard, the booming, slurred voice of a police officer with guilts too intense to hold tight, and the crash of skin and glass on wood. Our place, he mouthed; our place.

"Where?" he asked, and Riliane answered, and thunder clapped, and that was all.

Allen read the paper she gave him out of a glass bottle, like always, like children. It was a comforting constant.

'Secure me their downfall and my victory.'

He kneeled. "As you wish, milady."

She smiled the smile of a royal.

* * *

Police were often idealized as these perfect figures of authority and guidance, the saviors of the people. When the people found that salvation lacking, they knew who to blame.

To Germaine, it made rather clinical sense.

It was the nature of mankind to pin such things like fault to a third party, so they wouldn't have to deal with the proof of their ignorance staring them in the face. You weren't at fault, you couldn't be, so you found someone else to demonize. It was a dissociation type of thing, a distancing tactic. Those people would do anything to make sure they weren't considered guilty. Germaine knew people like those far too well.

She huffed and took another foul sip of her drink. When a case went cold, the police were to blame. They didn't do enough, or they didn't care enough, or they waited too long, and it was all their fault for being so intrinsically incompetent. The moment they messed up one thing, they went from being those perfect figures of authority to terrible scabs upon the face on the earth, due to suffer in the Hellish Yard forevermore for being human and making human mistakes.

Typical.

Even though she sympathized with the general population, when a case went cold, it wasn't anyone's fault. It couldn't be anyone's fault. It was simply what happened. And that was her own dissociation thing, probably - hate was hard and revenge harder, so why put the blame on someone you couldn't see when you could focus on fixing the problem?

Sometimes, on her darker days when she remembered the war, she tried to feel hate. She tried to muster up the sense of vengeance that had plagued her when she was little. She would always hold the nastiest grudges, and Allen-

Oh, Allen.

Allen wasn't anyone's fault, either. It was simply what happened, and she had to make peace with it, or she wouldn't get any sleep at night.

She glanced at the bottle she was drinking from. Fucking brandy, tasted like horseshit, made her feel worse. He would hate this. He would hate this so, so much; he would grab the bottle and any flask she carried and he would dump it into the sink, because he didn't like his family being inebriated or hurting or distancing themselves from reality (they were cowards, and he was not). He cared for her and her father more than they did themselves, and Germaine would find herself grateful for it at the worst of times. He would hate this, and he was gone. Kidnapped. Whisked away. Case gone cold.

(Whose fault could it be, if not her own?)

Germaine poured herself another glass.


	2. the twin assassins

The next day, Allen was buried elbow-deep in dirt concerning a certain few men. It was hysterical how they left so much out in the open with no competition after the previous head's eradication of every other prominent family in Lucifenia. It was sloppy and reeked of poor management, but at least it worked in his favor.

He sipped his coffee, scrolling through the ministers' paper trails. A lot of it didn't work out - bank accounts that went nowhere, misplaced files, some paperwork just downright missing. Did none of them have driving licenses, or were the channels they secured their identification through just that incompetent? There were tax evasions by the dozens, though he couldn't really say anything, since he was considered dead by the police. You couldn't tax a dead man no matter how much Riliane wanted to. It would fix the funding crisis, at least.

Allen felt the strangest urge to smash his mug. He was not Chartette.

The funding crisis, as their boisterous security detail had coined it, went like this: Riliane and Allen had a sizeable inheritance left by the previous heads of the Lucifen family, easily in the millions, but in theory there should have been an _even more sizeable_ amount of money in the family coiffers. Funds left from past family operations, their businesses still functioning at the pier, the casinos, the protection tax, the construction labour union infiltrations and the ever-popular illegal arms trade. It should've been well into the _billions_ , even with the Lucifen family's retreating influence in Evillious. Arth and Anne had toiled too much to not see profit even four or ten years after their deaths, and they were the ones who secured the organization in the first place.

Riliane had thrown a right fit, and he had barely been any better.

"I will have their heads! Fetch me who did this!" Riliane had screeched, and then Allen and Chartette had to double-team her so she would stop shredding paper. It took Chartette shattering two sets of china for her to calm down.

The numbers in the family accounts were alarmingly stagnant. No, not only that, the numbers were _decreasing_. Allen had run everything two, three, nine times, and the same mocking string of digits stared at him. It was barely a half more than their inheritance.

To up those numbers, Allen had to resort to desperate measures. He ran around Lucifenia, sleeping in alleys, perching on balconies, leaping off rooftops and slumming it with the unfortunate to minimize cost of living, stake out the state of the Lucifen family's influence, and steal things. Allen was very good at stealing things. He'd been at it for eight years, and with Riliane, that was essentially his entire life.

It shouldn't even be his _job_. There should have been people in charge of finances, people in charge of the paperwork, intelligence officers stationed throughout their territory that were supposed to _report to Riliane_ or some other higher-up about these kinds of issues but they had all either sacrificed themselves in the various gang wars during Arth's reign, were eliminated and dismissed as collateral, their loyalties lied with someone else, or just plain incompetent.

Looking at the numbers in front of him he was inclined to believe the latter options. He was going to cry and faint again and break things and just become Riliane, maybe. He didn't want to deal with this shit.

He shook his head, shutting off his carefully cleaned computer and disabling his private network with swift fingers. It was half past two in the afternoon; his sister was due her evening snack in a bit, and he had to be on top of things before leaving that night.

"Chartette, could you tend to the Princess? I've got to prepare her tea," he said, taking out dough from the oven.

The redhead stomped gaily into the vast kitchen, arms filled with plates and eating utensils. Allen could only assume she had broken the dishwasher and was afraid of breaking the kitchen taps. "Yeah, Allen, I've got it," she said.

Allen raised an eyebrow. "You are quite sure of that?"

"Yeah, too!" She marched right off, leaving the great heap of silverware and delicate china on the drying rack with a resolute clang.

The boy nodded, as this was trademark Chartette behavior, and turned back to his brioche. "I'll keep you to it, then."

He was sure he would have to help her out pretty soon, though.

True to his predictions, he heard a crash coming from upstairs - oh, the dome. Truly spectacular. Allen wondered if Chartette had broken through a window. If she did, Allen had no doubt she would be alert and eager to please even after falling hundreds of meters to a not-death. Chartette was practically indestructible and possessed a monstrous strength that even his old tutor, Madame Phutapie, seemed to be wary of.

It was why Chartette had been raised as their maid and their unconventional bodyguard. She was clumsy at all the tidy work, leaving Allen to (quite happily) pick up the slack, but when it came to protecting the manor she had every card in place. Allen was gone so often; he needed someone to protect Riliane in his absence. And he had complete faith that Chartette was the woman for the job.

"Penny for your thoughts?"

His brain rushed to catalogue; light, feminine voice, his twelve o'clock, five meters. He watched the window; no telling glint of an unsheathed weapon-

Allen stilled. "Would I have the honor of knowing the lady's name?"

"Well aren't you a polite one!" A disarming laugh.

He was adept at dealing with assassins, but he hadn't heard this one coming. That was okay. He had disarmed ones that didn't announce their presence at all. Curious, why this one did. Maybe killing isn't the objective? But that was an assassin's approach, aside from the liberal use of voice. Calmly, the boy turned around.

Bright ponytailed hair, knives, a few inches taller, gray ensemble – a _teenager_.

The alarm must've shown on his face, because the girl—assassin, surely—broke out into another laugh. She waved it off, but Allen refused to put his guard down.

"Apologies, apologies, Heir," she curled her lips into a wry smile, yellow eyes twinkling.

 _Heir?_

"Make it quick," he snapped, filing that away for later. The girl wasn't approaching, but he eased himself into a casual, careful stance with his left side wide open. Safe, not sorry. "Tell me your business here, young miss, and we can talk."

"Mother always warns me about this," the blonde girl muttered. "The name is Ney, Ney Phutapie. Ring a bell, 'Lex?"

No one alive knew of that name. He had made sure of it. Even Riliane had forgotten it, over time. Allen. Allen. Allen. It had always been his name, as far as anyone was concerned.

"Phutapie," he said slowly, "as in Madame Phutapie?"

There. Recognition, but—

Phutapie raised her hands and her lips stretched into an all-too-familiar grin on an uncannily familiar face. "Who else?"

 _"Gretel?"_

"Shh!" Gretel—Ney—hissed. The floor was spinning. Boom, boom, boom, in his head. "It's Ney. Wax is in the bricks."

Ears in the walls. She still remembered that juvenile code they'd made up, all those years ago, before he had left for good, when they had more time to play rather than strategize meetings and heists, when the Lucifen family business was nothing more than a nebulous concept left to the adults.

 _"My name is Allen," Alexiel whispered to himself. Thunder crackled, lightning shooting up the sky as he ran away from the house that held nothing but ghosts. "My name is Allen, and I am a street kid of seven, and I have never heard of the_ Lucifen _family name."_

 _"My name is Allen," Alexiel sniffed at the other kids, later. The sun was beating down on his face and they were all gathered under a bridge, waiting out the daylight. "I'm seven. I was wondering..."_

 _"The name's Gretel," a girl said, wild short hair and a dirty white bow askew, grin a thing of legends. "You lost, city boy?"_

 _He made to speak._

 _"Shh, the walls have ears," she whispered. Alexiel laughed, confused, exhilarated and overwhelmed, sitting under a bridge with the homeless while a world away a storm was beating down on his family._

 _"More like the brick is full of earwax," he said, nearly stumbling on the weak snark. He knew why he did it — it was unfamiliar, an_ entire _new behavior that belonged to Allen and Allen alone. A distancing thing. "I was wondering if I would be inducted? It's dreadfully hot out here, and I'd rather keep our the_ heat, _if you understand what I'm getting at."_

 _She smiled. "Consider_ y'self inducted _."_

 _"My name," Allen said_ later, _when night had stretched across the slums and the children, festering with hunger and sallow in their features, had dispersed. Gretel turned to him._

 _"My name," he repeated, "is. Was. It was Alexiel."_

 _"I was supposed to be Cain," Gretel said. She traced stars in the dirt._

 _Alexiel—Allen, snorted. "There's a story there, you know. Why Gretel? Where's your Hansel? Your Abel?"_

 _She paused. "Why Allen?"_

 _He didn't answer._

"Masters smite your face," he swore softly. The grin grew wider.

Allen re-examined his old childhood friend. The same mean edge to her eyes, albeit a different color - contacts, of course - and frighteningly long hair a shade brighter than he was used to. A looser, more languid, more careful gait, a carelessness with her limbs that spoke of ignorance, a certain grace about her borne of trained poise, hands never straying from her belt (she must have depended on it a while, now. Allen knew all about depending on weapons.) Nothing like the energetic, spiteful, obnoxious child he had met under the bridge. "You've changed."

"As all do," and the smile dropped, leaving a slightly grim face alien to him. It must have belonged to Ney Phutapie, and her alone. A distancing tactic. He understood that.

She sat on the island counter beside the silverware, appraising the pile blankly. "They were necessary measures. How's the Heiress?"

"She insists on calling herself the Princess to respect mother," he said by way of "okay". Questions bubbled in his mind and by every second that went by another one took its place. He ignored it for now.

His eyes trailed to the clock. "Fuck." It was 2:42PM.

"He said fuck," Gretel - Ney said, eyes widening in something akin to comedic reverence. "The ever-eloquent Alexiel. It is a sign of the end times."

"I can say fuck if I want to," Allen said, "and it's Allen, now. Just Allen."

"Necessary measures?"

"More selfish ones," he corrected. "Get yourself off the island, you're making me think of cleaning when brioche should be made."

"You can cook?"

"I will cook _you_ if you don't start explaining yourself, and yes, I am proficient in the art." He went back to brushing the loaves with eggwash. In the corner of his eye, Ney shrugged herself off the island and reached a hand into her jacket, pulling out a thin stack of gray files.

"I brought some things you might want to know, Heir."

* * *

Managing finances was hard. Managing mysteriously disappearing finances which should have been in their favor, even more so. She was elbow-deep in nonsensical numbers and, at that point, felt entitled to a spot six feet under in the Heavenly Yard where she would never have to manage family accounts ever again. She wasn't even supposed to be doing this, but Allen was absolutely _insistent_ on doing subordinate work. After he fainted the other day, it was only natural for her, a big sister, to help out!

The door opened, and she glanced to see familiar blond hair before glancing down again, intending to make more progress before addressing him.

The Princess of Lucifer resisted the urge to roll her eyes as she heard a loud crash from somewhere. Chartette was most likely responsible. Riliane just wanted to have a good soak—that would calm her headache—but the redhead just wasn't made for the finer tasks of a servant, and she knew her brother couldn't be everywhere at once no matter how hard she wished.

"Are you done? I will not entertain you if you are any later."

Her focus on the papers before her was cut short at what was most definitely not her brother's voice. Her head snapped up sharply, reaching for a concealed weapon almost subconsciously.

Blond ponytailed hair, blue eyes, a knife. Very mightily dressed up, garish makeup on his face and a truly ridiculous... thing on his head. It was an abomination to hats everywhere, she almost felt personally offended. A teenager, perhaps, slightly older than her.

The teen snickered at her expression as she lowered her hand. "Were you going to attack me? I'll have you know that I'm the best knife thrower in this country."

Her lips curled into a smile. He never changed. "Lies and slander," she said softly, and the boy's smile widened. "It is common knowledge that I am the best, Hansel. You should know that."

He huffed, wrinkling his nose in a too-familiar gesture. "You're deluded. And it's Lemy now, Ril-yan." His accent was much better now, but for some reason he was insistent on butchering her name. He took off his hat.

Still, though—

"Lemy? That's your killer name?"

He walked up to her desk, bristling. She didn't bother hiding her laughter. "Yes," he grit his teeth, "I am Lemy Abelard. Fifth the Pierrot to Pere Noel!"

She smiled indulgently. No chance. "I am sure you must be very intimidating, what- Boy of the End?"

Riliane finally left her desk and resisted the impulse to hug her lifelong friend, adjusting her skirts. "Now, let's go. You must be introduced to my brother." She made her way out of the room, knowing that Hansel would follow.

"What a demanding woman you are," he crowed. "How is he like?"

"He's you, but better."

"I see you're still an insufferable pedant."

"And you're still a dimwit. Good to see you haven't changed much."

"Queen of Hearts."

"Murderclown."

"Evil aristocrat."

"Chicken Little."

He sped up towards her. "That was a one-time alias!"

"Not anymore, it isn't," she sing-songed. It was good to have a friend back.

* * *

Ney watched as her oldest friend's knuckles grew white from gripping the thin files she'd brought. One required a certain level of naivety to even react in such a way, and seeing Alexi- no, Allen, a fellow street urchin, acting with any amount of disregard for his typical cynicism was partially amusing and partially pathetic. As he brought a hand to his face, an enraged screech piercing her ears, she struggled to keep neutral. The only thing preventing her face from giving any tells being several years of intensive training.

 _"You must be better," IR said, pacing around the room like a predator stalking prey. "You must be stronger."_

 _Gretel didn't like being prey. "What does strength mean when you have no one to be strong for?"_

 _The woman laughed, and Gretel could only watch. "Be strong for yourself. It is the only way to be acknowledged by others. People who are only strong for other people and not for their own sakes will be destroyed in this world; for what will happen when they are gone, and the people they are strong for are left with no one to be protected? What will happen when there is no one left to protect?"_

She had been so angry, at that moment. A trusted instructor attacking her very reason for existence - it was hard to swallow and harder to consider and downright impossible to implement.

And here Allen was, one of the strongest people she knew, shedding enraged tears for a problem that shouldn't even be his. It was laughable. Pitiful.

"I'll kill them," he whispered, and the familiar promise was foreign to her ears. "I'll kill them all."

The grey files she brought contained several accounts of multiple things. One of the most prevalent things among them was fairly blatant (and ridiculous amounts of) embezzlement, appropriation of family-owned property, identity theft, raids under the wrong names, stolen accounts, unaccounted-for acts of unnecessary border violence, the whole ten yards. Insubordination. Insubordination. Insubordination. Chat logs, filed video proof, paper trails, discrepancies in administrative files, references of references upon references of data and damning evidence she had accumulated over the span of a week. And Allen was holding onto the proof of their empire crumbling despite all the work she knew he had put in like it was the only thing that kept him alive - no, like destroying it would be the only thing to validate his existence. Brioche lay abandoned on the countertop.

She had to distract him, somehow.

"You told me," she said abruptly, and she could feel Allen's eyes boring into her side but nevermind that for now, "you told me that you would tell me about your sister when she found you."

"And you vowed you would tell me about that brother of yours when you happened upon him," he said listlessly. He was so much more articulate, these days. It fit him. "You found him, then?"

"I did," she said, voice hoarse, "I did. He's great."

He laughed. It was broken. "Did you know Riliane didn't even remember my name when she came for me? It was raining and father was drunk and sister wasn't any better. I called to her, 'Riliane!', and she looked to me, confused, like I was a stranger." He shook his head, ran a flour-caked hand through hair she was unused to seeing tied. "I told her my name was Allen."

Wait. "Am I…?"

"Yes," he said. His lip curled in the bitterness of it all, and Ney couldn't blame him. "You're the only one who remembers my name at all."

 _"People who are only strong for other people and not for their own sakes will be destroyed in this world; for what will happen when they are gone, and the people they are strong for are left with no one to be protected?"_

"You're wrong," she said, and she didn't know who she was saying it to. "Your name is Allen, now. Just Allen." He didn't say anything for a while, and the kitchen was plunged into a calm sort of silence.

Briskly, Allen broke it by turning on the tap to wash his hands and pick out the flour from his hair. Still such a neat freak. "Don't you think this reminds you of the old times?" he asked, wringing his hands. "Us telling each other our problems, and all."

Ney blinked, thinking about it for a bit. "Bah," she nudged him, slipping into an accent she hadn't revisited in ages, "old times, 'e says. Speaks even li' a blueblood being in a cot of spoons, too!"

He recoiled. "'ve always been talking li' that, 've been!"

Ney smirked triumphantly, ruffling his hair and ignoring his indignant screech. "Nay, ye aint've. Ye've been talking li' a port brat for longer if 've got summat say in it! Nothin' li' yer sister!"

Allen slapped the hand away. "Ye've got it wrong, cur! Me sister aint've-"

"Allen, you _know_ that ghastly dialect?" a mortified voice came from the entrance.

Lemy and a teenage blonde girl with her hair in a bun and a scandalous expression on a familiar aristocratic face. Ah. Ney loosened her stance, staring at the newcomer. They truly looked alike, the Princess of Lucifer and her best friend. It was almost uncanny.

"Riliane Lucifen d'Autriche," Ney said, cold and blank. "I've been waiting for you."

Ney saw her eyes flitting across the room; brioche unmade on the counter, Allen's hair disheveled and wet, the files on the countertop, her working clothes and the utter dissonance between Ney and Lemy's current personas.

"Get away from him," she said, just as authoritatively and with just as much icy vitriol. When Ney didn't move, the Heiress snapped her fingers. "Chartette!"

Ney carefully didn't startle as a red blur fell from the rafters, barely reacting fast enough to avoid the death-dropping 'Chartette'. A guard, bright red hair in tornado twintails and a ridiculously inconvenient maid outfit. It looked like something her mother would ask her to wear.

That wasn't the point. Allen didn't tell her of this, and neither did any of her distance surveillance provide evidence of a guard in the quarters! By all means, the two heirs to the Lucifen family were all but _defenseless!_

She cursed, taking a defensive stance. As an assassin, she wasn't used to direct combat, but guards had to be adept at it.

Chartette swooped in quick, fast, and heavy. Ney fell back, dodging a few more bruising strikes before going for an opening on the redhead's side - it was so unguarded, it was practically -

 _Dodge, dodge, that's a -_

 _No!_

She barely escaped. She was getting rusty. Ney had to find a way to take out her knife. Chartette's incessant blows, slowly backing her up against the wall, made it all the more difficult to do so especially since with the ceiling at this height Ney simply couldn't afford to jump. There was an instinct-filled haze taking over her brain as the two went at each other with the intent to neutralize, Ney on the defensive and Chartette on strong offensive and it was _working_ _damn_ it she _should be better than this!_

Chartette grinned. Ney kicked in a chair and ducked, the air whooshing out of her for a split second before she regained her bearings and unstrapped the knife from her bracers. It was _her_ time to grin.

The redhead startled, and they began a new game. Chartette wound her arms and Ney tucked in to hamstring-

"Ril-yan!"

"Chartette!"

The two fighters did not disengage, their breaths heavy, falling into something reminiscent of a battle fog.

 _"Allen!"_

Ney's knife stopped centimeters from Allen's throat, and Chartette's combats very nearly made contact with his back.

"Both of you," Allen said, "stand down."

They stilled.

"You _absolute idiot_!" Riliane screamed, dragging Allen away from the awkwardly standing girls. "You could've gotten _hurt_!"

"Well so could they, had I not intervened," Allen said. "They are both very dear to me, Riliane. Must I explain that further?"

Riliane, being a sucker for Allen's puppy dog eyes, relented. "Alright," she said, massaging between her brows in hopes of banishing the headache building up there. "Would you do me the courtesy of introducing yourself, at least?"

"I'm afraid you'd be talking to my sister, you'd be," Lemy snarled.

Riliane's eyebrows shot up. "You mean to say-"

"Yes," Ney agreed, no, _purred_ , "Ney Phutapie, at your esteemed service - or Gretel Salmhofer, if you prefer."

Ney carefully watched Allen from the corner of her eye as the tension bled out of his body. He didn't know her last name, but he did know Salmhofer. Who didn't?

Riliane squinted imperially at Ney. The package felt heavy in her duffel -

"I imagined you shorter, to be frank."

* * *

 **Sasha: This was a bitch of a chapter what the hell... Allen had to yell at me to get on the doc and write this thing. In any case we're getting to the Fun Shit next chapter now it's like 12am dhdbfkdn**

 **Allen: That's not true? I get naggy, not yelly.**


	3. incredibly, mind-bogglingly peculiar

When Gretel Moonlit is four, her mother leaves her and her brother at a bus station.

They're shivering and scared and alone with only sharp whistles and shouting travellers as company. They wait.

"She's not coming back," Hansel whispers to her, four hours later, when the workers are starting to leave and the lights start going off.

"Just wait," Gretel says, and holds tightly onto him. "Mother will come back."

They pinky swear on it. It's a mutual reassurance, a little more than a promise, a little more than a hug in the freezing cold.

She's left them there. She's left them there like two bags of trash and _she's not coming back_. Gretel feels dizzy and sick and the place darkens, and she swears she sees the moon shining brightly despite the dark ceiling between her and the sky.

Eve ends up coming back _(it's like an eternity in the cold)_ with a gauntness lining her hollowed cheeks and scratch marks on her hands. Their knuckles are white as they refuse to leave, and Eve doesn't find an excuse. That trust has been broken and even if they go back one abandonment will only pave the way for more. It'll only be her brother and her, from now on.

That's what she thinks about when she commits her first murder. She is barely six.

"I'll take first watch," Hansel offers.

"No," she says, washing her hands of blood at a cafe sink and disinfecting her scrapes. "No, I'll be awake. You sleep."

"Be there in the morning?"

They pinky swear on it. Hansel sleeps like a babe on the plastic sheets they've gathered, and Gretel grabs more to shield him from the pouring rain. She is Gretel, Hansel's sister, and she will stop at nothing to protect him.

* * *

Kids— kids need food. Kids need space and nourishment to grow, and learn, and warmth to make sure they never know what bone-aching cold feels like. That's what kids need. Kids need care.

Kids do not murder for money.

Kids do not grow accustomed to a void in their stomachs and frost forming in the folds of unwashed clothes.

Kids do not bite and claw a man's throat out in the false name of self-defense.

Kids do not look like Hansel and Gretel.

It's only a matter of time before they get caught, and they're split up. Gretel won't leave her brother for anything. She kicks and screams and shouts and it's all she can do not to bare her teeth and snarl. "Hansel! I'll be back for you! I promise! Don't give up on me!"

"Never! I'll find you, Gretel," Hansel shouts back. "I promise!"

It's not a pinky swear. It's far more serious than that.

 _(sometimes, she wonders if she should have outheld her hand, that_ day, _if it meant they could be reunited faster.)_

* * *

She's shivering and scared and alone and for the first time in her life, she's lonely.

The orphanage is terrible. Gretel hates everyone there. While there's shelter and some semblance of a stable diet, and she appreciates that, she does, she doesn't appreciate not having Hansel. She doesn't appreciate other people touching her. She doesn't appreciate other people saying that she's too problematic, that she's too stubborn, that she's too mean-spirited, and it's as if they're spitting on her and Hansel's efforts at taking care of each other.

 _"Ungrateful,"_ she's heard the other kids say about her, sometimes. They don't have parents that are alive and she must be so special to get to have one. Instead, she wasted it and ran away. She's a coward.

And there, she learns this — kids are petty.

Gretel refuses to be a kid.

 _(growing up is hard and lonely and no one understands.)_

The worst thing is really when the adults start showing up at the orphanage and taking kids away. It's not like kidnapping, it's more like getting a puppy. They make sure you have your shots and you're healthy and eating properly and all the paperwork is in order, and off you go.

 _(kids need parents to grow, after all.)_

Like she's going to trust another mom and dad. Like she's going to trust any other mom and dad with Hansel. Like she's going to do anything they tell her to.

Isn't she so _ungrateful?_

Later she learns her biological mother is Meta Salmhofer, one of the members of a prominent criminal organization; Pere Noel. Gretel has only ever heard that name in street tales, whispered in fear of their exploits. Raids and bombings and extensive connections and laughing in the face of the government. Salmhofer is in prison from evading the law for as long as she did.

Evading the law. Exactly as she wants to do. She won't get caught, ever, and then she can find Hansel.

So she runs. She runs and runs and this time she won't ever stop. She is Gretel Salmhofer, and she will stop at nothing to find her brother.

 _(she is a beast, and she almost gets caught too many times, and once she stabs a man to death and doesn't feel guilty— she meets a boy with many names and the saddest eyes she has ever seen, and he is like her brother but he is young and smart and she really could use a friend. it's lonely.)_

 ** _(he isn't the sharpest knife in the kitchen, and he has a new mother who changes her name as often as he changes his socks, and he misses his sister. he meets a girl who reminds him of her too much, but she's bossy and condescending and rude and lonely.)_**

(they become best friends.)

* * *

When Riliane Lucifen is six, her dad dies. She's not yet old enough to understand such a heavy loss and everything that it implies.

Then her brother vanishes into thin air, and suddenly she does. They shared the same soul, she used to say.

That week is spent crying and sobbing, thinking she sees him out of the corner of her eye and trying not to think she can see Alexiel's face every time she looks into a mirror.

 _That week is a blur of stealing and crossing state lines, of scavenging for food, hiding from adults and cops, and finding warm places to sleep._

Riliane learns knife throwing and self-defense and how to take an insult because she isn't going to be some damsel in distress waiting for a prince to save her from her own mistakes. It takes almost too much work and she nearly gives up too many times, but she picks herself back up again and throws herself into her studies. She's the older sister, she's going to protect her brother when the time comes. (If- no-) When she finds him.

 _He learns pickpocketing and lockpicking and how to get lost in a_ crowd, _because he has to survive and he isn't going to lie around for someone shady to take him away; Riliane will never find him if he does. He has to be nearby when the time comes. (If- no-) When she finds him._

Riliane meets a boy who misses his sister and they trade insults with each other, if only because he's dumb and can't take an insult and can teach her a lot about knife-throwing and he looks too much like her brother, and those reasons are enough. His extended hand is enough.

("What was he like?" he asks, and Riliane finds that she can't answer.)

 _Allen meets a girl who misses her brother and they trade secrets and stories with each other, if only because she is reckless and lonely and needs someone who can be her anchor before she loses herself in her quest and sometimes she reminds him too much of his sister, and those reasons are enough. Her extended hand is enough._

 _("What was she like?" she asks, and Allen can only smile and tell her the story of a pair of very miserable twins who refuse fate.)_

* * *

The Lucifen's penthouse suite was very strange. "Very strange" didn't do it justice. "Incredibly, mind-bogglingly peculiar" didn't even cut it. It was fuck-all weird.

One could very clearly tell which parts of the penthouse had Allen's sense of practicality and which parts had Riliane's sense of splendor. The difference between the two in terms of interior design were fascinating and lent the place a jagged, eccentric feel, like the difference between a picket fence on green pasture and spoons made out of the crown jewels. It was quite fitting, honestly, given the people who lived in it.

Ney could only imagine the heart attack dear Prim would get if she saw the place. She spent a good few seconds entertaining the thought before moving on.

The door in front of her practically screamed "Riliane". Completely covered in delicate carvings of roses and smelling like forest, still. She had no doubt it was real wood. Probably the stuff that came from those ancient forests. It might even be Millennium Tree with how loaded they were.

She raised a hand to the alarmingly inconspicuous door knocker and rapped on the wood five times, the weight of the metal and the parcel in her arms making no difference.

"Heiress? It's Ney!"

There were sounds of shuffling behind the door. "Come in!"

Ney easily pushed the door open. She was not impressed.

Riliane's bedroom was about three seconds away from being dollhouse. It was vast, feeling like a living room instead of a bedroom, with plush golden walls instead of the soft gray Allen preferred. They were lined with pink drapes and paintings by artists only Kyle could probably recognize, and there was a four-poster bed with a thread count that was most assuredly in the hundred thousands. A ceiling-to-floor window opened up to a garden balcony, as if the big one downstairs wasn't extra enough. The _other_ ceiling-to-floor window gave what must have been a very charming view of the city skyline but Ney was being rather preoccupied by _all the possible security breaches_ to pay much attention to the moon. There was a _chandelier_.

She had to restrain herself from shaking Riliane and asking her why she installed _a very droppable chandelier above her own bed_. By the Master of the Heavenly Yard, there was a _reason_ why the Lucifen twins appeared to be absolutely and completely defenseless. She thought it was because they could defend themselves and had some sort of extensive security network in place, not that they had no sense of self-preservation at all!

Kyle had not warned her of this. Well, in hindsight, he had, but it was nowhere near enough. Next time he visited, Ney would have to lecture her dear brother on the difference between "incredibly, mind-bogglingly peculiar" and "fuck-all weird". They had two very interestingly different connotations. For example, the first cryptically entailed that the ways of the Lucifens were simply alien to the fragile pillars of Kyle's conscience. The second explicitly entailed (by way of the word "fuck", you see) that the ways of the Lucifens were incomprehensible to the entirety of mankind.

Chandelier. Above the bed. Next to a garden balcony.

 _Chandelier_. Above the _bed_. Next to a _garden balcony_. _With no security network. Several windows. Incredibly open._ Riliane, _what the fuck_. How were they not _dead_ yet?!

The damned girl herself was sitting at one of her two very comfortable-looking couches, looking incredibly content, sipping tea and playing a game of chess with herself - white, apparently. You know, like a rich brat. Ney didn't get why Allen liked her so much, but she understood being devoted to a twin.

"Ney," she greeted amicably, gesturing towards the second very comfortable-looking couch. "What brings you to me?"

Ney sat down on the very comfortable-looking couch. It was exactly as comfortable as it appeared, as well as a miniature sinkhole. She'd probably get swallowed if she wasn't careful. "Heiress - Allen was not the only one I had a gift for."

"Naturally," said Riliane, eyeing her parcel with wide, curious eyes. Ney nearly twitched. "Go on, tell me more."

"This is from… a business partner of my employer's," said Ney, clearing her face of any emotion besides mild indifference. She couldn't master truly expressionless, like her mother had, like Abyss had, but placidly neutral would get her far enough especially with an opponent as intermediate as this. "I was her daughter for several years." The amount of effort she had to exert to keep from grimacing was absurd. Ney blamed Prim.

"Oh?" She didn't think it was possible, but Riliane's eyes widened even more. Ney didn't think that Riliane had much going on in the ways of gossip. This was a heinous oversight that had to be rectified effective immediately.

The older blonde set down the parcel on the coffee table between them. "I would advise you to be careful opening it. That woman was not pleasant in the slightest."

Riliane fiddled with the packaging, carefully unboxing the gift. "Salmhofer?"

"Masters, _no_ ," said Ney, with a bit of a purse to her lips. "She's still in top security Divine Leviantan prison, unfortunately."

"I'd have thought a woman of that caliber would escape sooner."

Ney frowned. "I'd have thought so too."

"Oh? Are you planning on doing it for her?" asked Riliane, sounding very much like a nosy teenaged girl. Which, Ney supposed she was.

"Maybe, maybe not."

Riliane finished opening the package with a flourish. "Best of luck in your endeavors, the-" the Heiress stopped in her tracks, her eyebrows raised and a slight frown to her lips, in the way nobles get when they're politely confused. It made way for an expression of wonder when she released the item from its bounding cloth.

She looked up at Ney. "A mirror?"

"A mirror, yes." Ney's eyebrows pinched. It's just as she expected.

Riliane turned the golden mirror around, examining it from every angle with a carefulness in her fingers. It glinted in the chandelier's light, glowing with a shine that was almost ethereal. Ney felt something cold drop in her gut.

"Be careful with it," she repeated, sounding somewhat like desperation to even her own ears. "It-"

"It?" asked Riliane, an appraising gleam in her eyes. "It's a wonderfully clear mirror, but why would that mother of yours gift me this? And something you're so wary of, as well?"

"My brother had the same," said Ney. "It didn't pan out well."

"Hansel? Truly?"

"No, the real son of the woman I'm supposed to be a daughter of," said Ney. "He's a very kind man at heart; of the dense sort, but kind. He wanted to be a painter. Mum gave him a mirror as a present for being a good son, one that looked exactly like this, and he… changed."

Riliane put the mirror down, fascinated. "Changed… how?"

"He became selfish," said Ney, scowling. "Self-centered, awfully inconsiderate, smug, narcissistic, like no one else in the world was important. He left a squad I led to die, because he thought they were _inconsequential_. They were some of my best operatives. I had spent years with them."

Riliane's aristocratic features immediately fell to the ghost of fury Ney had seen in that kitchen. She was too transparent. Ney had no doubt the girl was thinking of Chartette. "Have you gotten rid of him?! That's unacceptable!"

Ney felt like laughing. How naive, how _childish_ was this Heiress, as to think that something as simple as murder was unacceptable? It was to be expected. The underground did not follow things as fluid as _morals_. Sometimes your leaders were great, and sometimes your leaders were terrible. _(whispers that smelled like blood in the dark of the night, oaths made that could never be returned,_ livelivelive _-)_

No leader played fair.

 _(she is a beast, running along that thorned path, grim like death, grim like the stars blinking mockingly at her, grim like the shadowy footsteps of her people she had left to the mercy of fate because masters, she won't get caught, she'll never get caught-)_

 _(she was prey. she didn't like being prey.)_

 _(wasn't she so_ ungrateful? _)_

Ney smiled. It was a bone-achingly empty smile. "Calm, Heiress." She was still bristling like a particularly annoyed cat. "He's better now. Doesn't remember a thing of it, actually."

There was a beat of silence. "And it was this mirror that caused it?" asked Riliane, glaring furiously at the mirror like it would set on fire if she tried hard enough.

Ney nodded.

"If it truly causes that much trouble," Riliane spit out the word like it was poison, "why don't you just destroy it and be done with it?"

"Do you think we haven't tried?" Ney chuckled darkly. "Dead. Every single person who tried to smash it to bits went insane and killed themselves. My Master has one of them and she experimented with it quite a bit."

"One of them?"

"I was told by Mum that there were four," said Ney. "My network informs me that it used to be a prized heirloom of the Lucifen family, but apparently someone had it remade into four hand mirrors."

Riliane's eyebrows shot up. "The Lost Mirror of Lucifenia?"

"The very same."

"Tell me where the other three are, _now_ ," Riliane demanded. "This is something that cannot stand! I must know their locations."

Ney thought through her possible routes, frowning. "My employer has one of the hand mirrors, but I am unsure of where the other two are. It will be hard for my network to track down two golden mirrors, what with the state of Lucifenia's black market. The underground is in _shambles_. I need more resources, more time. As it is-"

"Then you have it," said Riliane, rising from her seat. She straightened her skirts with an imperious flourish and held out a hand. "Ney Phutapie, Gretel Salmhofer - you are wasted as a mere informant. Would you join the Yellow Rose and assist Us in reclaiming the Lost Mirror of Lucifenia and all operations that come with it?"

Ney stared. To Riliane's credit, she didn't flinch.

One required a certain level of naivety to blindly extend a hand to a person they had barely met to ask for _help_ from that person, when not a day ago they were holding a trusted bodyguard at knifepoint. She had no doubt Riliane would offer help to one of her own if she could. She seemed too lonely, too regretful a person to deny someone the chance.

The Heiress was transparent. She was self-centered. She lacked common sense. Putting someone like her in charge of a criminal empire - the Lucifenian underground, no less - would only end in death. Joining her meant suicide.

Riliane still showed no sign of backing down, the gloved hand still firmly extended for Ney to take. Her blue eyes had a bright sort of pride to them, expression deadly serious.

Ney started to laugh. It was an all-encompassing sort of laugh, the kind that made your ribs hurt and your throat sting and stole your breath away for the longest time and put black spots in your vision. It gained in volume and intensity the longer she laughed, and by the end of it she was coughing with tears in her eyes.

The entire situation was hilarious. It was inexplicably, incredibly, mind-bogglingly peculiar. It was fuck-all weird. Why… why was she laughing?

 _(doesn't she remind you of yourself?)_

Ney had her answer.

"Very well, Heiress," said Ney, trying to catch her breath. "And what will I have in return, hm?"

Riliane didn't miss a beat. "In return, We will give you the assistance you need in breaking Meta Salmhofer out of prison - and anything that comes after. Deal?"

Ney's smile dropped, her expression grim and almost intensely blank to match Riliane's. Her shoulders shook not from free-spirited laughter, but from something akin to burning desperation. No - determination. She had long given up on being desperate. She had found Hansel, after all. "You swear?"

"Within all Our power," said Riliane, never faltering.

Ney took her hand. It wasn't a pinky swear. It was so much more than that.

People would hear their name in street tales, whispered in fear of their exploits. People would look at them and shudder. People would see them, these inconsequential beasts, these ungrateful peasants, these _children_ , and they would see people that mattered; not things to be abandoned at a moment's notice. She would run and run and run and never get caught and maybe, just maybe, when everything was over, she could settle into a spot just by the sea with her brother and think of nothing but the sky.

"Deal."

Her grin was a thing of legends.

* * *

 _Dearest mother,_

 _How goes Asmodean? When I went, the hot sand whipped at my face constantly on the windier days and the chills were dreadful at night - I do hope you don't experience the same! But of course, I wouldn't have to warn you from wandering about, mother. You are far more responsible a lady than I._

 _I am nearing the end of my travels. The view in Lucifenia is wonderful at this time of year, and so I will be heading there to finish my rather indulgent perusal of the continent. The dining in Marlon has left much to be desired in my palate no matter how harshly Karchess denies his country's main fault. What I would give for well-made pirozhki; alas, my stop to beloved Levianta was quite a time ago. While_ Maistia _represents an exciting prospect, I am not looking forward to gathering more paperwork than necessary, so_ naturally _my journey halts here._

 _Lucifenia is well-known for its roses as well, are they not, mother? I will be sure to bring some to you the next while we meet. I've heard from a friend of mine currently residing in Rolled that Lucifenia has crossbred several breeds of roses to create such a rose that resembles the Orthodox Lucifenian - can you imagine the brilliance of that! I do wish Marlon had minds like theirs; we could do well with Lucifenia's flower-lined streets. Or well-made streets at all, really. I would even settle for those_ greeonio _plateau roses, the ones that grow in Merrigod Plateau. Did you know their roots are quite dangerous with the right handling, mother? I heard of an awful tale back in Elphegort (incredible country, though undoubtedly hostile to foreigners) that a gas was being produced from them. If you_ have _want of visiting, mother, do be careful. I don't think they have yet made a cure._

 _I will be sure to send you a few of those roses; perhaps you'll take a liking to them? I felt quite vain when I looked in the mirror this morning, looking at them in my hair. They clash, mother. They clash. I'm sure you'll have a right scolding set up for when you visit, and perhaps I will try putting some in your hair! It will add some color to your drab formal attire._

 _Take care, mother. Do write me back as soon as possible. I have missed you._

 _Your dear daughter,_

 _Ney Phutapie_

* * *

After Ney's exit, Riliane was left alone in her bedroom with the hand-mirror on her coffee table. She frowned.

So _this_ was a part of the long Lost Mirror of Lucifenia.

A mirror that supposedly _changed_ people. A mirror that changed people for the worse. A mirror that made what was meant to be a kind man into someone who thought that lives were something to be toyed with, something inconsequential. A mirror that made one of her own experience a grief so great as to give someone as strong as _Ney_ that chilling pause, that smile that held a millennium's worth of pain.

It seemed ridiculous, that a simple object could have such power, but she couldn't deny what she knew. Normal objects couldn't, shouldn't have an effect so deep in a person, able to change the very foundations of people.

And it was within reach, given to her as a gift by people who wanted to do her harm. She withheld the impulse to spit on it. The best course of action would have been to destroy it, had it been a normal mirror.

 _"Dead. Every single person who tried to smash it to bits went insane and killed themselves."_

It sounded like something straight out of a horror movie. Objects couldn't control people, they didn't have wills.

Well, they weren't supposed to.

A cursed thing, handed as a gift, because it was so obvious she would fall for it, wouldn't be able to resist it, wouldn't be able to feel her very being changing.

They thought her a _child_.

Riliane placed the mirror on her chessboard and shifted it ever so slightly, toppling all the black pieces. She stared resolutely into it, her unmarred reflection scowling back at her. She would keep this mirror with her and come out unchanged. She would win.

Children were not meant to fight wars.

Children were not meant to lead criminal organizations.

Children were not meant to be like Riliane and Allen.

She refused to be a child.

* * *

 _"They say that behind the most infamous criminal organizations in the modern era was a circle of children._

 _One of their favorites is the topic of the leader. They say that the head was a queen of only fourteen, with a grin like the nobles bygone and orders as sharp as the knives she threw and voice as sweet as honey when she played the world around her like a storyteller weaving a tale. Yet, she was far from strange as she ordered the decline of people far more important than she._

 _They say that the head roamed the streets like a ghost as he reached out to the lost with a soft upturn of the lips and soft reassurances on his tongue, of ragged clothes and a kind disposition. They are unsure of how accurate this version is, but it is well agreed upon that this version might have been the strangest of them all with how much visible effort he took in ensuring things went well. The personification and the antithesis of the mafia._

 _They say that perhaps there were two heads, instead, and that is the most incredibly, mind-bogglingly peculiar theory there is. The twins behind the operation laughed behind the pompous veneer masking society's ignorance._

 _They say that there was a pair of assassins that carried with them the meaning of violence and of torture, the hands to assist the heads, the audience to a sharpening tongue; they say that they resembled the heads quite a bit being twins themselves, but with grins too wide to be noble or kind and words that felt better unsaid._

 _They say that there was a boisterous knight with clumsy feet and a grip too strong for stone or the firearms she brought to the most mundane and the least civil of places, earnest in serving and loyal to no fault. They say that there was a rather curious pair, as well, far from twins with demeanors as different as the countries they came from - an artist with the pen of a king and the words of a strategist, and a young historian with the fingers of a bard and confidentialities slipping through drying ink._

 _They say that behind these children, or more aptly beside them, was a trinity of people long thought to have retreated to the shadows to lick wounds that simply wouldn't heal. A witch with her music, a knight with his justice, an assassin with her knives. A woman mourning, a man with a daughter, a tutor forgotten._

 _They say that this circle was gathered by some sick advent of fate with the one objective of a new criminal reign and all it foretold. This marked the beginning of what would then go on to become the first generation of the Yellow Rose..."_

 **–Excerpt from "Criminal Empires of Evillious" by Yukina** Freezis **, accomplished children's writer and crime journalist. Now available in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook.–**


	4. déchéance

Being an assassin meant familiarizing oneself with death at another's behest; both the concept and the execution.

It meant memorizing the rhythm of a song no one dared sing, acting out the steps of a waltz no one dared dance. They were often thought the stuff of movies, romanticized fiction, and when they appeared in reality, they were colored to be worse than the Master of the Hellish Yard. Evil, faceless people with no emotions.

While the "evil" bit was debatable, he and his sister-practically primary examples of that sort-commanded _quite_ the variety of emotions. They ranged from the kind one would see in black comedy to the kind one would find in the slums. And it wasn't as if they were incapable of remorse.

They understood, possibly more than anyone, what came with the job. The stakes, the risks, the _money_.

Of course, Lemy had never gotten a _no-fee_ high profile job with such a stupid fucking motive before.

" _Restoration of family integrity_ , he said," grumbled Lemy in a rough imitation of Allen's high pitched Lucifenian as he hopped down a story. " _Just another assignment,_ he said."

It was not, in fact, that simple. It was well within his abilities to kill a few people, but what Allen did not understand was that the "spoiled old men" he was talking about were actually essential in the mess that was Lucifenia's old capital. Or so Ney told him.

The first one on his list was one of the more prominent embezzlers, and one of the most useless- some upper class dipshit in charge of the factories on the west side of the pier called Don Tonk. It wasn't the worst name Lemy's ever seen, but it was up there. Don Tonk mostly spent his days lounging in one of the upstate mansions near the Square (not too far from Lemy's foster mother's residence, actually), with a constant supply of booze and the finest Beelzenian cuisine, nevermind being smack dab in a state known for its foods.

Previously, Tonk was just a six-rungs-down lackey set for general management of a single Yellow Rose factory, but when the old underworld command chain started dropping like a line of dominoes, Tonk managed to wrestle control over the rest of the factories left from the gang war and the assets that came with. Of course, the man couldn't get to where he was on factories alone- he monopolized the illegal product export, controlling two thirds of the waterfront through his Asmodean grunts, and ran several smuggling operations on the side.

Well, that was the surface of it. Lemy didn't know what happened to the Lucifenia of back then to let the underground grow this sloppy, but he would be _damned_ if he went into this job without doing his homework. (Ha. If his mother could see him now, she would be weeping tears of rage.)

When Lemy dug further (through several questionable means of which neither he nor Riliane will ever give up) he found out that while Don Tonk was "the head" of these operations, and was also the most visibly rich, he was just one of _many_. Ney gave him a few leads-which he was offended by, because Lemy could find these by his own damn self, thank you, sister-and from there his list expanded like a balloon. The inefficient arguments around territory and arms was _maddening_. The redundancy of the management and the incompetence of the security was _maddening_.

The one thing Allen and he could probably agree on was the deterioration of the underground and, by proxy, the city - no, the country itself. The assets weren't fucking maintained, several fronts in Lucifenian were low quality and terribly designed, where the fuck was the money actually flowing, yadda yadda yadda here's some people you have to kill.

Well, technically he knew the answer to that, via the Neyclopedia. A good half of it went to Asmodean's ministry, a portion to the Elphegortian Rose branch which did absolutely fucking nothing, some of it to the Pere Noel funds (the Dealer was a prick, but at least he knew business), some of it to Maistia by way of- ugh, okay, no, stop. He didn't have enough brain cells to keep the facts straight anyway, nevermind his mother's (mostly Phoebe's) half-baked attempts at giving him a formal education.

The journey was almost insultingly easy. Taking the train from up north wasn't much hassle, especially when one was an ex-Leviantan street rat, and things got progressively easier as he arrived in Rolled. He bounded down the secluded side street he knew led to an apartment rise by the Orgo River with sure footsteps barely catching on the asphalt. From there, he would continue until he reached the large courtyards and grand manors that made up most of 1st Block. The don's manor was placed surprisingly close in design to the Abelard Mansion, with tall walls and an elaborate gate keeping out the rest of the world.

Lemy checked his pocket watch with a sour expression on his face, the little engraved dragon peering up at him in some warped caricature of mockery. The metal dug into his gloves.

2AM. It was time.

Steadying himself for one, two breaths, he pulled out his knives from the sleeves of his pierrot costume and got to work.

(And he understood, really, more than anyone, what came with the job. The gaping chasm, the blood underneath his fingernails, the bile always in the back of his throat. Lemy has never stopped long enough for it to matter. Being the Pierrot was his job, his responsibility- he could not afford to regret. Not yet.)

* * *

 _Ney clasped her hands behind her back with a firm set to her shoulders, no sign of a winning grin or even a dissonant grimace, carefully neutral. Her eyes were filled with something_ Lemy _didn't want to name._

 _"They'll help us," she concluded, and that something had seeped into her voice and it sounded - grateful, almost. Relieved, like the elimination of a threat, like the utterance of thanks. "We won't get caught. You in?"_

Lemy _didn't know what to think._

 _"That sounds like a promise, sister."_

 _"But it is," and there's the grin that's as familiar to him as the gleam of his knife, "have I broken a promise before?"_

 _"You're being awfully trusting," he wanted to say._

 _"You're being awfully skeptical," she wanted to say._

 _It was almost funny, really. They had been on opposing sides of that argument before._ Lemy _too blind, Ney too blunt, the road back to 1st Block too cold. It was a question of loyalty yet again, but neither of them wanted to replay that night. Those questions weren't appropriate_ any more _, anyway- they were both killers. Neither of them had the right to talk about ethics, about trust, about motives._

 _Then again..._

 _The pierrot closed his eyes, hooked the little finger on his left hand, held it out. Ney mirrored his gesture._

 _They pinky swore on it. It was little more than a promise, little more than_ a reassurance _, but this time the walls didn't feel like they were closing in and the ground was stable beneath their feet and the night sky was in full view._

 _It would be a checkpoint. After their bones started to creak and their selfish adventures would come to an end, when they didn't have to look after each other's backs every dying day for fear that something would give, when they had enough money and could sleep without wondering about work the next day, they would look back at this moment with their smiles immortalized in paper and names engraved in stone and say, finally, finally say, that they never did get caught._

 _It was a childish fantasy, he had to admit, but they couldn't stay children forever. Ney has regretted long before he even began to think about it, and the only fear he had in his heart was that one day Ney would grow up without him._

 _He thought about that look in her eyes, and wondered if she already had.)_

.

Don Tonks' corpse was eventually found later that morning, face-down on his desk with two deep stab wounds spanning the length of his back, blood still dripping down onto the study floor. The following night, during the meeting to discuss the funeral and his successor, all twelve of his closest subordinates were killed in a similar manner. This was a pattern that repeated with more and more mafiosos, to the point where it could be ignored no longer.

The perpetrator was an unknown assassin obviously skilled in his craft, but with no visible employer. There was no reason to the killings-no, the massacres-aside from them all being important figures in the underground society connected to the Yellow Rose. They had just begun, but the mafiosos had ultimately decided it was a major threat to them and their operations, and thus organized a gathering to manage it.

Naturally, the most infuriated was the foolish young Heiress, successor to the throne of the Rose left by her parents (and, of course, only kept alive by sentimentality). The invitation she sent to each "minister" was thus:

 _"To the esteemed ministers of Our Lucifenia,_

 _By the will of the_ Lucifen _House,_

 _your esteemed presence_

 _is requested_

 _for Dinner and Drinks_

 _on August 10th, EC XXX_

 _at seven o'clock in the evening_

 _at the_ Lucifen _Manor, Lucifenian Republic_

 _RSVP C.L. by August 3rd_

 _271-519-1167_

 _There is much to be discussed. The rose will not collapse here._

 _HRH Riliane Lucifen,_

 _L'Héritière."_

All that was left was to wait.

* * *

Lemy, Allen begrudgingly acknowledged, did a very thorough job when it came down to things.

It had barely been a week since he had assigned the troublesome pierrot the task of eliminating the figures of the Lucifenian underground, and he had already provoked such a large reaction from the rest of the families. With this exemplary progress, Riliane had been delighted, and ordered for the second stage of the plan to be brought ahead of schedule.

Staring narrowly at his planner, Allen thought that Lemy had done _too_ thorough of a job.

While Chartette was the one officially listed as the event correspondent, Allen was (as usual) the one left up to actually organizing the dinner. He was almost always busy with something, either preparing their old Manor for guests or checking on their restaurant investments. Since the dinner would be much larger than he was used to, it took a little more effort on his part than his usual small self-sufficient birthday celebrations. The Avadonias hadn't needed a live-in chef, but Allen was happy to provide, and with Riliane there really wasn't any other choice. (She could make some mean brioche, though she always insisted his was better for some reason.)

"So," said Allen, laying out his notes on the dinner table. Lemy and Gretel-Ney looked up from where they were fooling around with a deck of cards. "Any specifics that you want added to your food, please say it now, or forever hold your tongue. I don't have all day." Well, he did, but that was beside the point.

Instantly, the assassins responded together, "No green onions!" "Lots of green onions!"

They shot each other wretched looks.

"I said no first," said Lemy, slamming a hand down on the table. Allen grimaced.

"Aw, and I thought I'd get to bully you," said Ney, pouting."You still hate them, yeah?"

Lemy looked faintly green with disgust. He stuck out his tongue. "Always."

"What are you, a toddler?" muttered Allen under his breath. Lemy looked at him sharply. "It doesn't matter either way, because a good portion of the ministers have some sort of Elphegortian roots, especially the ones that originally hail from the other branch. Green onions are basically an aristocratic staple there, very sought-after." He frowned. "And besides, they are supposed to be very, very amazing. I think."

"Where the fuck did you hear that," said Lemy, Leviantan accent getting thicker with brimming horror. "There's only one person I know who says that. Menace! Gave me _green onion salad_ once. I think it _blinked_ _at me_. I felt, shit, I was gonna die!"

Ney swatted Lemy's shoulder, returning to the deck of cards. "You exaggerate."

"I do not, fuck you," her brother squawked, signifying the end of that particular spat. He squinted at the cards. "Hm. Go Fish?"

"Haha, good try. Poker."

"No! You always beat me at that one!"

"That's because you can't hide your emotions for shit. And, you never fold."

Lemy scrunched up his face, like it would prove a point. "Different game."

Ney reconsidered. "Strip poker."

"Hell's fucking mask-"

The rest of the conversation went in a similar vein, with an insult of some sort appearing every two sentences, quickly devolving into a match of "who can put in the most Leviantan swears in a sentence and still make it vaguely grammatically correct". Allen watched in morbid fascination for a little while before sighing, returning to the tedious task of finding catering services that would suit both the ministers' refined tastes and Riliane's personal favorites. After a few moments of cautious deliberation, he circled two restaurants with red pen and exited his seat to begin making reservations.

He supposed he could ask them to go light on the leeks. It wasn't as if the ministers would be eating for very long.

* * *

Their mother's bare old bachelorette penthouse was one thing, but the original ancestral home was another thing entirely. Here, with history suffused into every marble square inch, was where the Lucifen bloodline had thrived and bled for _centuries_.

It was also horrendously stuffy.

 _(It was where their father had fallen. It was where their mother had taken her last breath. It was where Riliane had run away from. It was where Allen had run away from. It was lonely, and he hated it here.)_

It greatly resembled the Lucifenian Palace in structure, with miniature versions of the Hall of Sounds and the Hall of Mirrors in their own extravagant wings. The architecture was wide and vaulted, vaster and vaster with each step they took, tapestries and the contents of several armouries lining the walls in still splendor, priceless sculptures gleaming in their places, crystal chandeliers glowing in the bright light of the hall, with a clear view of the extremely well-kept garden ringed by stars through the open arches and tall windows. The mumbling noise of small talk and soft footsteps was almost magnified by the stone, mingling with the proud notes of the mini-orchestra playing at the side of the hall. It left the impression of history, of importance, thrumming in the air like it was something alive with the spark of potential instead of something to be recorded in hindsight, static.

The event would start soon.

 _(There was no history here but of the dead. What was truly present was an emptiness that stared at him from the cracks in the walls and the shadows of the columns, an impression of something lost, and something that he would never have again so long as he was still alive.)_

Two dozen ministers and their friends (spouses, escorts, important relatives, successors, close subordinates, the like) were gathered in the ballroom, waiting for the strike of seven to signify the beginning of the dinner. Allen thought that they would be more serious-faced, considering the contents of Riliane's letter, but it seemed that all of them had just treated this like another mafia social. Which was to say, a normal social, except all of the attendees had extremely warped world views, treated life like illegal four-dimensional chess, viewed murder as a mild inconvenience, and had hordes of suited mafiosos at every beck and call. Smiles like clawed fingernails and eyes that stared into the soul.

Riliane fit right in.

His sister was entertaining quite the crowd at the center of the hall, shaking hands and laughing daintily with their dinner guests as if nothing was the matter. Currently, she was having a muted chat with a man in a blue suit while Ney kept watch behind her. Allen studied the man with no hint of shame- a bit rat-like, with a crooked nose, long black hair and a nervous smile… Presi Rogze, Allen thought, finally matching name to face. He was one of Riliane's first supporters as Heiress after Alexiel died, or so Riliane said, but Allen was of the simple impression that he was a professional bootlicker. Never mind his questionable history with the government and the current Prime Minister, he looked like someone that existed for nothing but poor delusions of grandeur and thus was classified as trash. Allen wondered at Riliane's fortitude.

"Oy, Allen," whispered Chartette, tapping his shoulder. She was wearing a soft brown-ochre vest and tie instead of her usual maid ensemble, just like all the hired help bustling about in the hall.

Allen tried to put on a wan smile. "Yes, Chartette? Please don't tell me you've broken something."

Chartette's eyes widened. "No, not this time! I'd never!" Allen stared. Chartette didn't look like she believed in those words either. "Anyway," she cleared her throat, "the other folks are having trouble with the wine cellar. Shut it and can't get it open again, m'afraid."

This soon?

Unbeknownst to him, his smile vanished without a trace and was replaced by a faint gauntness in his face.

Chartette looked like she didn't really understand, but Allen knew from experience and the concern between her brows that she wouldn't pry. Allen appreciated that in a person. "Alright, then," she said, tone worried, "I think we should wait until seven."

"A bit after seven," Allen amended.

Chartette nodded. "See ya later, then."

 _(Coward,_ whispered a voice that sounded suspiciously like his own. _Always running from your problems and never fixing them. You'd rather you forget about it yourself than seek forgiveness, huh? Don't have enough options, do you? Did you stop looking?)_

Allen slipped away from the Hall of Sounds like a ghost.

He went to the wine cellar.

* * *

"You're having trouble?" asked Allen as he approached, face schooled into an appropriately helpful expression, falling seamlessly into his role.

"You fucking bet," grumbled the waiting servant, foot tapping impatiently in the dimly lit hallway. "The red-haired girl- whatsername, Chartette, she said a fellow named Allen knew how to open it? That's you, yeah?"

Allen nodded, ignoring the inappropriate use of swear words for the time being. This was civilized society, not a backstreet, but it didn't mean he had the right to harass them over it. "Yes, that would be me."

"Formal guy," they remarked, redirecting the tapping from their foot to their hand, making an annoying clunkclunkclunk sound against the wood of the cellar door. The full-alphabet keypad blinked red. "Get to it, my man."

Allen sighed, prepared himself for a momentous feat, and input _'EllukaIsBallerKissMyWizardAss42069Xx'_ into the wine cellar keypad.

The other servant whistled. Allen felt an embarrassed flush lighting the tips of his ears on fire. It was not _his_ fault that the Lion and the Clockworker had a longest-insulting-wine-passcode contest (and that Leonhart had inevitably made him memorize each one while drunk, never mind young Allen didn't know where half of these cellars were, or why his foster father knew of them).

The levity was soon shaken off, however, as he veered sharply to the left of the cellar and descended down a flight of steps. The other servant had followed him inside and was lighting the way for him with a flashlight, peering curiously at the aged label of the wine he plucked off the old shelf. He dropped the flashlight with a heavy thud as Allen tossed the bottle to him, plucking several more from the shelves.

"This one's got no real label on it," noted the servant. "You sure?"

"Absolutely," said Allen. "I have been serving the Lucifen House for years, and so has Chartette. It would be folly not to know its customs. Every three years, the House will host a banquet, and every three years, the opening toast must be one of these bottles at the back. No exceptions, or I would give the House my head myself, ax be damned."

The servant didn't look convinced. "Uh-huh? You… really like tradition, dont'cha?"

Allen sighed, walking over to the servant. "Where are you from."

"The, uh...? You asking me my backstory over here, dude? Moved around a lot, stayed a bunch of places. Here and there, ya know. Working a good sum for some Marlon dude since about a year ago, for a front. Nothing special."

Allen's footsteps stopped.

"So you really don't know what rule you've broken?"

He didn't give the other servant any time to respond, pinning them to the wall, whipping out an unweighted dagger Ney had loaned him for this specific occasion and pressing it to the servant's throat with a steady hand, razor edge nearly pricking skin. He spoke very softly. "Tell me where you placed the bugs, and I will let you go. Telling me will just make this easier for both of us, and for my master."

Even after upheaval, even after turning into a republic, even after surviving the fall of one of the most influential empires of the current age, the streets of Lucifenia remembered. There was a creed of rules, constantly changing to adapt to its population, but the most important one stayed the same:

 _Don't mess with the Rose._

"H-how did, how did you know?"

"Chartette is very good at what she does, and is an excellent judge of character. She saw you by Her Highness and offered to take you to the cellars when you showed great interest in it. Also, your flashlight is weighted."

The other servant whimpered, choking out a sob. "L-library, in a stack of books, and one in a gift for the Heiress, you know, uh, in the- _fuck_ , in the coat, th-the other's, in, um, under her dining table, in the hall with all the mirrors! That's it! Only, only three, I swear, _Masters_ , I swear, I was paid so much fucking money just to put a bit of poison in the Heiress's drink, the Rogze said, and I needed it, and-"

Allen let go of the plant, who was desperately gasping for air, and reached into his pockets for the wad of cash he knew was there.

"Take this," said Allen, pushing the cash at the other servant, sighing. He was doing a lot of sighing tonight. "It won't help much right now, but at least take it as an extension of my goodwill. What job right now, and which front?"

The servant caught the cash with widened eyes, one hand still rubbing their throat. "B-barista, a bar- or, uh, a coffeeshop of sorts in the morning, in the city? Right by the river? You know, Urwell's-"

"I'm familiar with that front," said Allen. "Tell Harbin that Kokutan-douji says hi, and that he owes me two people and five thousand Ev. Oh, and don't bother reporting back to Rogze. You work for me now."

"E-eeh?"

Allen plastered a patient smile over his face, gesturing with a hand. "The Yellow Rose pays well for plants. You're talented at stealth operations- just bug a list of locations that Chartette will give you in a week's time, nothing much, and you can resume your job at Urwell's with no extra trouble and an additional paycheck. Tell me if you hear anything interesting. Just think of it as a normal job, yes?"

The servant stared warily at him. "And the cash?"

Allen put a hand to his chin in contemplation. "You were supposed to get paid for this op, yeah? Well, consider this compensation."

"About… about the employee thing," the servant swallowed. "If I… If I didn't want to work for the mafia anymore… would you let me go?"

"You mean, can you quit?"

The servant froze. "I-I-It, I, if I can't, that's, th-that's fine, just don't-don't kill me, please, I have family I have dependants I-"

Allen pretended to think, frowning. "Yes, you can quit. But at least complete what I asked of you, we'll provide protection and surveillance, and after that, you can stop working for the Rose- we'll retract the paycheck, of course. Nonetheless, we'll spare the funds to relocate you and your dependants, if you so wish. What's money if it's not to be used, after all?"

The servant broke out a small, awkward chuckle. "E-eat the rich, right?"

"Right," Allen coughed, "go report to Chartette. She's your superior officer."

Allen watched the other servant kneel and scamper out of the cellar with dark eyes. If only it were so easy.

* * *

The Manor was grand and stiff and unmoving, like it always was, like it had always been, but Allen had the sinking feeling of being out of place. It was the little things that made up the unfamiliarity, the undisturbed cold of the floors and the lack of noise. It had not changed, yet it had. While he had spent days restoring the two main Halls, the kitchen and the reception hall to perfect condition, he had scarcely any time to visit the places of his childhood. _(You were avoiding it. You're just running from one problem to another. Admit it.)_

Riliane's 'room' was different, in a different location, but still so close. She explained that she had to move rooms after he disappeared. Her tone was nonchalant, bored and curling, as if the matter at hand was the weather or a new scone recipe and not the bitter fruit of his own foolishness.

What used to be _their_ room (the last thing that was truly ever _theirs_ and theirs alone) was across the hall.

He stood there with a stiffness more suited to one of the moss-covered statues in their Heavenly Yard, face like stone, gaze unmoving from the closed doorway. He stood for what felt like a very long time, doing nothing but observing the crack in a long-held facade. There, in the throes of the past, the echo of footsteps hung like dynamite.

With a detached curiosity, he noted the doorway was open now, and he could see inside.

Their old bed. Their old dresser. Their old wardrobe. Heavy-set curtains, never to be opened again. Toys belonging to him, that Riliane had not touched. A dusty doll-sized glass bottle. The pressing scent of stale air and must.

He took the stuffed rabbit still propped against the bed, lips pressed tightly together. A reminder. He lifted up the dusty ears and pressed a finger to its nose. He did not bring anything with him, that night. Strange that it would all still be the exact same. There was a tightening in his chest, and he felt that if he looked away for a second it would all disappear.

The boy named Allen stood up, looking inside at what had once been familiar, comforting things. They belonged to a dead child now.

Then, the sound of shuffling fabric, and the dainty creak of a door.

"Do you miss it?"

(Never.)

 _(Of course.)_

There were no nobles to disturb here, just half-remembered childhoods gone to dust. Allen tried to rise to his feet, but his knees were weak. Riliane, standing in the room with him, gazing wistfully at their old things like he was just a moment ago.

"I-" he swallowed, looking away from his sister, wetting his lips in a futile attempt to make speaking easier. He was offering an excuse for why he was in that room, playing with a ghost's things. Why?

Riliane smiled. It was with a depth she did not typically utilize, this steel-spined smile, borne of familiarity with nostalgia and regret.

"The dinner will begin soon," she whispered. "Remember your promise."

She searched him with a long, indecipherable look, found what she was looking for, and left him to his own devices. It left him raw.

Now or never. No second chances.

Allen left the room, closed the door, went up the stairs. His brain felt like steel wool scratching at the inside of his skull, a faint grey buzz, his surroundings a blur. There were still people here, the waiters and attendants he had called to help with dinner preparations, scampering about with only the dinner on their mind, carrying coats to racks and announcing names as they entered the manor.

The kitchen was in no less of a hurry. Everyone was finishing last-minute preparations for the appetizer that no one would notice a small form walking briskly to a section with several bottles of old wine set out for the occasion. He was wearing the castle's livery as well, so for all intents and purposes, he was just another servant. He took one last steadying breath.

Allen uncorked the Gift.

* * *

"What a choice! Pray tell, Heiress, what is this wine?"

A polite laugh, the wave of a gloved hand. "This is a wine We have had in Our stores for generations upon generations of Lucifen history. Our mother called it Blood Grave- calm, it has no blood in it, just the finest wine."

A cough. "Heiress, you will not partake in the toast?"

"We do not touch alcohol. We hardly see what is so wonderful about such a bitter juice- but, for the sake of family tradition, and as the Heiress to the Lucifen family, We will make the toast."

The clink of an empty glass. "You are young yet, Heiress- eventually, the day where you can appreciate such a flavor will come."

The subtle grit of teeth. "Then We will trust your good judgement."

"Ah, that reminds me- the taster?"

A sharp smile, a clap, the shift of fabric, measured footsteps. "We were expecting that, minister, don't concern yourself too much. Allen here is one of Our most trusted subordinates, you see..."

"What a mighty resemblance to you, Heiress! Orthodox Lucifenians are a rarity these days, aren't they?"

"He amuses me, with his appearance and his loyalty. A tribute to my Orthodox parents, you see. A true treasure." Noises of understanding and approval.

Then, like the chime of a bell, the sound of liquid pouring.

"The wine is clean, Your Highness."

Riliane laughed; high and trilling and joyful, as if genuine, as if innocent. "Allen, you may return. Now, to Our _esteemed_ ministers, the very roots of the Yellow Rose…"

A grin worthy of a noble. "To our prosperous empire!"

"Cheers!"

* * *

It started with the clinking of glass. There was a moment of silence, pregnant with some shaking feeling of foreboding in Allen's gut, as every guest present drank the wine. For a second, the light caught on the wine glasses, glinting poison vermillion. For a second, to Allen, the Hall was bathed in red.

The boy watched them drink with a sense of detachment from his position behind Riliane. His eyes did not move, simply observing the table before him with a dead stare.

Allen's world was one of paradoxes, of distrust and loyalty, of streets and mansions, of things that worked and things that didn't. The foreboding he felt earlier crowned, the sense of I don't belong in this broken place consumed him, confused him, like it wasn't a world that was his. Or, if it was his, then it was only for the moment. Right now, it felt like he wasn't even real.

The scene before him was like staring through a distorted mirror. Distant behind the glass, separating what made Allen and Alexiel between an impassable barrier.

 _(His father falling, the wine spilled. That was not his father, that was not the wine he drank, that was not his body-)_

 _'Allen'_ was born as a child of the streets who only had vague memories of times before. He had a foster father who loved to drink and things to hide and a foster sister with the best hugs. Nothing more, nothing less. That was his reasoning. That was his shield.

It just didn't seem real to him, the future had never hit truth to him, the past he actively repressed. He buried those feelings in the soles of his thickened feet, the stolen wallets of the unfeeling, the disgusting, a filth in his veins and a crick in his neck that unnerved him. It proved difficult to picture one year following the next.

And then, the mirror broke.

Everything was clear to him- Allen or Alexiel or anyone else, reality was the only thing before him, laid out by the sound of falling bodies, and he was losing himself in the shards.

 _they drank the wine and this was not the first time not unfamiliar to him his eyes his ears there were so many of them wearing the clothes that he used to and then he was falling to the floor the hand holding his glass fell there was vomit on the marble he cleaned and he was screaming but he was weak nothing he could do they lay already dead their chests fluttering before stilling nobody would come nobody would come_

 ** _nobody would come_**

 _they are dead do you remember they are dead just like your father was dead just like_

Both now and then, he ran.

.

The vomit on his tongue raised a stench above even the blood in the other room. Someone was choking on air, reaching for breath. There was something grating about being there, something familiar and uncomfortable, brimming with static. The lines between the blood-soaked room in the past and the same boy curled up in a corner blurred.

 _he was six years old suspended in the instant he kissed death and lived_

 _he was six years old running through the tragedy-stricken manor, his father's body spilled over the ground at his feet_

 _he was choking on sobs, he was alone, he was alone, he was-_

"Allen."

 _he was alone alone alone nobody would come nobody would come they are dead you are dead do you remember_

"Allen, get a hold of yourself!"

The hand grasping his shoulder was the realest thing, for a moment, cutting through the buzz. The fingernails pressing into his shoulder pads, the palms digging into his collarbones, almost as if reluctant to let go for fear he might shake himself to death.

"Look at me. Allen, do me a favor and fucking _look_ at me, will ya?!"

It was Gretel. Golden eyes, blue eyes, dirty white bow phasing into a lengthy ponytail, the past and the present still blurring before him like a desert mirage, but one thing he would rather die before mistaking was her expression. Her expression was still the same. The same bright-lit mean-edged gaze, the determined set of the brows, the lips pulled back like sneering would solve all his problems. She was not smiling now. There was nothing to smile about.

All his life, he had been running away. He made no move to stand.

"My dad died here," he said, voice hoarse, past the block in his throat, and all of a sudden it was _too easy_. "My dad died here. It was my fault. Always my fault. He drank the wine I bought for him and we buried him the night after! I didn't know it was poisoned, but I was trained _better_ than that, should've known better, but _no_. I was an idiot. He was too good for me. He died because of me and I've never been able to look it in the _fucking_ eye and I had to go back here and do the same thing." He laughed a broken laugh. "I'm such a pissing coward. Rat shit, garbage-throating bastard of a thousand wh-"

"Don't."

Allen looked up. Gretel-Ney looked furious.

"Don't insult yourself like that." She bit her lip, almost as if to start again, but she looked pained at the words available to her. In the end, she settled on an easy silence, and Alexiel began to talk once more.

"I ran away because I couldn't deal," he said. "I drank the wine in his glass just to see if I would die like he did. I didn't, for some- for some, shitty _reason_ , and then I ran away, because I couldn't bear the consequences. I'm so fucking _stupid_. What kind of son..."

Silence.

"What would happen to a kid who killed his dad in the mafia, huh? I know of gangs that would accept the killer as the heir in a heartbeat, but…" he shook his head. "The Rose isn't like that. Mother isn't like that. She would never let a traitor into her family."

"Would she have listened to you, if you gave her the chance?"

Alexiel gave a weak shrug, and tried to catch Ney's gaze. "I wouldn't know. Never got the chance to ask her."

But Ney was not looking at him. She was staring at the vaulted, carved ceiling like it held the answers to something she couldn't quite ask. "I don't know if I've told you this before. I killed my mother."

Alexiel's face hurt to move, fixed in a listless expression. "Why?"

"We were young and stupid and scared," said Ney quietly. "I took my mother and my brother took father. We ran away, after."

"Did you look back?" He paused, and rephrased his question. "Do you regret it?"

"I can't say if I do. There must have been another path, but that path- I didn't take it, you know? I only have the path I made with my own feet. The only thing I can do now is move forward, and not get caught." She tilted her head and caught Alexiel's stony gaze. "I think you've done a good job of that so far, coward or not."

...Allen laughed.

It was a strange laugh, this one. Unfamiliar and stiff just like the walls of the not-home around him, a laugh he had never laughed before. It wasn't nice or happy or innocent. It wasn't broken, no. It was whole in a way that he had not been in a long time; split between his sister and a past that he didn't deserve, between an empire he had barely begun to handle, and there he had forgotten himself.

"I've…" he said, shoulders shaking, choking out his words with the pain that seized his throat, "I'm really an idiot, aren't I?"

What would Father say?

 _Treasure your comrades. Treasure your family. Treasure what you build with your own two hands and stay humble. Alexiel… I'll leave it all to you, yeah?_

"I've _never been alone_ ," Allen whispered, and for a moment, the world seemed a little brighter.

* * *

After Ney left the room to deal with clean-up, Allen was told to sleep. He felt all too human and all too raw, but he agreed that was the only thing he could possibly do to recover right now.

 _"Trauma sucks," said Ney, shoving Allen back down onto his old bed with a huff as she prepared to leave. "Stay there! We'll deal with this."_

What he had not agreed to, however, were the dreams.

It was like he had forgotten how to dream anything other than that, that room, the faceless people, the wine. The night terrors crept up his chest in a way he remembered all too well from when he was small and homeless with nothing but a plastic sheet to defend against the Lucifenian winter, taunting him with half-formed visions of things that were better left unremembered.

He woke in a cold sweat—he was sure, in that line between a dream and a death, that it had all been real. That everything had happened just moments ago.

It was three in the morning when he realized he couldn't sleep.

Perhaps it was because of the disturbing happenings of the day, or the way he could see his father's fallen body every time he closed his eyes. He wondered why murder in itself was considered the worse sin, but the thoughts that came with dug further than the kill; to think led one down to the endless roads that they may have been able to take, the possibilities that he had not considered when taking life. There was only the path he walked now, certainly, but it didn't make wondering any less easier.

He thought about what his sister would had done, if their positions were reversed. Surely, she wouldn't have run away. That had to have been one of the reasons his mother hadn't looked for him in the first place, having been born weak. That was okay. When he had learned of her death and the feeling rose up, he hadn't recognized it. It felt filthy and terrible, but he enjoyed it. _Relief_.

He had never known that relief could hurt.

Perhaps, he could even dare to say his sister must have not felt _relief_ at the time. Yet, he had never mustered the courage to ask, not once in all his four years of working for her. He was simply too afraid to know the answer.

He sat on his bed, bringing up his bare feet upon the soft covers, and focused on just breathing.

Somehow, he was still alive when he opened his eyes again. His room was still his room. The boy was still Allen.

Somehow, that was the worst part.

* * *

Ney walked down the stairs with nary a sound, her fingernails digging into the palm of her clenched fist as she counted the beats of her heart.

One-two, one-two, one-two. Almost like a waltz.

 _"Did you look back? Did you regret it?"_

The answer was too easy. It stared her in the face from the shadows of the proto Lucifenian palace, unblinking and relentless, a constant she always ignored for fear they might swallow her one day. The path she walked was not so easily quantifiable. It involved more than just herself, webs upon webs of characters and connections, and the only solace she received from it was the knowledge that she would live for one more day, that she would have one more chance to find her mother.

What was the use of looking back, if you only lived to walk forwards?

What was the use of regret, if you couldn't spare time to repent?

 _(The real answer: everyday. Everyday, regret thrived like a living thing within her very bones, eating her from the inside out, replaying scenes in her head she could not hope to forget in a thousand years. But it did not matter, because she was alive, and they were not.)_

Ney shook her head. They were useless thoughts, as Kyle so liked to say- the somber atmosphere after the dinner had just killed her mood, and Allen wasn't helping whatsoever. He would probably feel better after a few days of heavy distraction, which was thankfully in line with the huge underground fuck-up they just caused. The Heiress better _appreciate_ the Gift (haha, ow, that was lame.)

Procuring the Gift was not as hard as it should have been. Considering the matter of her typical work, it wasn't much of a task at all. The Rogze family had sold her employer the formula to a particularly potent sleeping drought in return for a Phutapie-trained shadow to conduct assassinations and inter-family guerrilla warfare. As a result, young Ney had been given the name of Marlon, and assumed the persona of a well-mannered politician's daughter to the public eye while acting as the symbol of PN's relationship with an influential Marlon family to the underground. It gave her exploitable connections and a good position within the hierarchy, so she really couldn't complain.

An example of those perks: it only required a quick phone call with Pere Noel's business representative and a small transaction from the Rose's operation funds to become the proud owner of three vials of Second Gift in the name of the Yellow Rose.

During the call, she had confirmed two things: first, there had been no news of the other parts of the Lost Mirror of Lucifenia circulating at all (not surprising), and second, Le Milieu was in disarray. Families eyeing other families in the scramble for power, the possibility of uprisings from opportune subordinates, whisperings of dissent and discontent. Ney had been careful in listing only the families that posed the biggest threats to the Heiress' reign and the ones with the more malleable successors, though inevitably some of them had been brought along to the dinner and… negotiated with accordingly. The servants that had tried to run and broken the silence agreement, Lemy disposed of.

Not everyone present at the dinner died, naturally. Some proved slightly resistant to the poison's effects, and were promptly disposed of by yours truly. _Some…_

Some did not deserve to go so peacefully.

Ney pulled out her flip phone from the folds of her maid skirt, quickly dialling a newly-memorized number with decisive vigor. One could almost say that she was excited.

"Hello, brother dearest," she drawled in Leviantan, "how is our _wonderful_ guest coming along? He awake?"

There was a slight crackle from the other end. _"I'm surprised he can still open his eyes, really. You gave him one hell of a whopper."_

"So he's there?"

 _"Yeah,"_ said Lemy, _"he's with me in the dungeon."_

… What.

 _"There's a dungeon. Just trust me on this one. There's an actual fucking dungeon._ Line _of prison cells. Really, uh, medieval."_ Lemy went on to describe the details of the dungeon and its location. After relaying the relevant information, she hung up on him, and made her way through the hallways to find the… dungeon.

It seemed that being extra was not exclusive to the heir twins, oh no. The entire fucking Lucifen _lineage_ was just Like That. There were gargoyles, fountains, marble statues, a hall filled with wicked swords, an entire wing dedicated to bedrooms of varying grandeur, useless trinkets, stained glass with Heavenly motifs, a throne room seemingly for _no reason other than to look cool_ , and, to the best of her knowledge, _seven chandeliers_. She gave up.

The servants' hallways were narrow and had significantly less decoration, the only adornments being the occasional withered flower pots, old lamps, and a few small paintings. Eventually, she found a large wooden door with a loosened padlock _(bad security, was this thing for show)_ , and pushed it open.

The dungeon was two lines of dingy cells, smelling heavily of something that might be rust or dried blood. Prevalent amidst the iron, though, was the scent Ney had learned to associate with a person scared shitless. It was a generally foul odour.

"Sis," said Lemy, bare-faced and solemn, shoving a figure into the cold stone floor. "Got 'em."

Ney didn't bother to reply, approaching the shaking figure with slow, deliberately audible footsteps. Their dark hair was long and lank, their nose crooked, nervous smile wiped and face almost unrecognizably twisted. In the coldest voice she could muster, she uttered two words:

" _Presi Rogze_."

The man did not look up. Pathetic. She started pacing with the same lackadaisical rhythm, hands behind her back, golden eyes narrowed.

"You know, uncle," she said conversationally, "I'd thought you would know better than to put yourself under the banner of a Rose _minister_ , especially after last year, hm?"

No response. Ney continued.

"Don't make me laugh. Your ambition is hopeless. Tell me, what did you wish to accomplish here?"

No response.

"Then allow me to ask you again." She stopped pacing, slowing to a halt right before the man's downturned face. "When you were talking with the Heiress, earlier, what did you say?"

"I-It," stuttered Presi rather poorly, "it-I wasn't-it was just, ah, uh, a list of names, really… nothing too imp-portant, no, I wouldn't dare…!"

"You were thrown out of the Rogze House, stripped of your title, and forbidden from forming connections with the underground for as long as you remained alive. All your possessions with possible criminal roots were confiscated by the Queen's Rose. All your assets were frozen. And yet, to be here, in such a place, to attempt the disposal of the Heiress in such a manner…" She crouched down and took the man's chin in one hand, forcing him to look her in the eye. He whimpered. "Our Prince would not grant you amnesty or pardon so easily. This, I'm sure, violates one of the terms of your agreement with him. So, tell me." She leaned closer. "Is the Blue Dowager's faction still active?"

Presi did not answer. His face was still a deathly pale.

 _(Kyle stared down at the rat-like man before him, hand on his gun. Ney wasn't sure whether to be delighted or disappointed at the cold glint in his eyes, reflective like mirror shards. "To spare you your life, I must not acknowledge that you live. Wipe your presence off the map, cut all ties, surrender your fortune. You are allowed to keep ownership of a company of my choice, with the added condition that half its profits go to me. Are we clear?"_

 _"We are clear, Prince," whimpered Presi, kneeling nose-first into the floor._

 _Kyle frowned strangely. "Dis...dismissed," he said, with a wave of his hand, and the man left the Marlon Hall in a quivering bow.)_

In the end, whether it was active or inactive, abandoned or unabandoned, it didn't matter all the same. She had sources more reliable than this bastard of a man. "If you will not explain yourself," Ney said softly, "then I will do what I have always wanted to do."

She pulled out the knife from her skirts with a quick flick of her wrist, the old oil-lamp light casting her face into shadow.

Blood splattered the dungeon floor.

 _(Ney turned to her half-brother with a questioning look on her usually blankly joyful face. "Wouldn't it be easier just to kill him?"_

 _For a moment, Kyle did not respond, and Ney expected to be dismissed with a flick of his hand and barely a glance like every other day she questioned him like this. His authority was absolute as the leader of this coup, after all, and she was nothing more than one of his right hands. To her surprise, he swallowed, carefully looked her in the eyes, and replied in a feeble tone: "Miss Margaret, she… she wouldn't have wanted that."_

 _Kyle was smiling softly. For the first time in a long while, the Prince had an expression akin to the boy she had known all those years ago, the upturn to his lips slightly lopsided, eyes kind and glittering, the gun dropped on the ground with quaking fingers. He turned to his_ _half-sister and_ beamed _._

 _"I can't feel the mirror," he said, tears freely flowing down his cheeks as he knelt upon the dais, "it's gone! The mirror is gone!")_

.

In a parlor off Methis River, a young man slowly stirred his tea with a bored frown, staring out the window to gaze upon the littered pier. Even in what was considered the richer half of Bariti, the northern district couldn't avoid the inevitability that was rubbish. An honest failing of his people, really- perhaps he should organize something to clean it up?

He shook his head. No, that would never work. People would talk, his position was precarious enough as it was, and it would resume its filthy state by the next week at the latest. The young man sighed in quiet resignation.

Almost as if to distract him from his useless thoughts, the barely-used phone in his jean pocket began to ring. _"So, let's play a game of girl dissection-"_

No, no, no! This was most _definitely_ Ney's doing, the infernal girl! Face heating up in embarrassment, the sad existence known as Kyle Marlon picked up the phone a little too quickly, not even looking at the caller ID.

"Good evening," he said, regaining his composure almost instantly (that was a skill he'd had to practice, he was glad it was starting to pay off). "Kyle Marlon here. What is it that you wish to say?"

 _"Ah, hope I didn't catch you at a bad time, Kyle."_

Kyle blinked in surprise at the slightly Lucifenian tilt to the Marlon words. "Ney! It's been a while since I've heard from you." Then, in the most authoritative, solemn voice he could muster, " _What_ have I told you about changing my ringtone. Really, you know I ha-"

 _"-ve a reputation to maintain among your subordinates, I understand, I understand! You worry too much, honest. Just wanted to have some fun with my second favorite brother."_ He could just about hear the pout in his sister's words. She hadn't grown up at all, even though she was seventeen now.

"You've been saying that for the longest time and I still have no idea who your favorite brother is," said Kyle dryly.

 _"It's a secret. You don't deserve to know."_

"Hey!"

 _"You've been demoted to third favorite brother, by the way."_

...

"I'm cutting your salary."

 _"_ No _you aren't."_ She had a point. Ney was one of his most reliable subordinates, whimsy aside. He couldn't appoint just anyone in charge of the SMTF. _"Anyway, the line should be secure. I would love to chat more, Prince, but I'm afraid this call is strictly business."_

Kyle stilled.

Ney never called him 'Prince' anymore. Not since…

"I'm listening," he said. If Ney meant business, Ney meant business. The least he could do was pay her that respect.

Ney's tone was brisk, neutral, with barely any inflection. _"In the past three hours, I have encountered an unnameable. This man has explicitly gone against word sworn to the Prince and Old Marlon. This individual has voided your mercy by attempting the assassination of the head of an allied faction."_

Here, Ney seemed to pause a bit, as if considering her next words carefully. _"Namely… the Yellow Rose's Heiress."_

The young man stared at a full cup of cold tea.

For an entire thirty seconds, there was no sound from his lips, no expression on his face. If one were to walk by this young man, fully intent on observing, they would see nothing but the slight shake of his pupils and the trembling of the parlor table.

"General."

 _"Yes, my Prince."_

"Status on Rogze."

 _"Eliminated. I took the liberty."_

"Have him burnt. I will handle the ashes myself." A small exhale. "I expect full reports on Riliane's status. Progress on the mirror?'

 _"Progress is minimal, no news at all."_

"Then either someone is suppressing it, or it is hidden further than we thought. Continue searching. I will begin my own efforts."

 _"Very well, Prince. Will I expect to see you soon?"_

"Perhaps. Good work, General." Kyle hung up and set his phone on the parlor table, propping up his head with his hands, lips pressed into a thin line.

 _Mother's old faction, hm?_

After a moment of thought, he picked up the phone again, this time dialling a number himself.

"Dylan," he said, "book me a ferry to Lucifenia."

* * *

 **Sasha: this took far longer than it should have, apologies;;; we've been on a roll recently tho so! look forward to shit ig! im sorry plots being slow next chap we're gonna try a hand at like. suspense. idk. and if u think we edit... we dont**

 **also: kyle's ringtone is from "otome kaibou" by deco*27 ft hatsune miku i do not own it please listen to it its a bop but tw for implied suicide ig. also guess which miku. thats all byebye see you in a month or so!**

 **Allen: I can't believe this is finally done this took AGES! see you guys next time!**


End file.
